Stepfan Taylor ready for Rose Bowl

STANFORD FOOTBALL Rose Bowl Preparation

Updated 11:32 pm, Saturday, December 29, 2012

Senior running back Stepfan Taylor is just a hop, skip and a jump from becoming Stanford's sole all-time leader in touchdowns.

Senior running back Stepfan Taylor is just a hop, skip and a jump from becoming Stanford's sole all-time leader in touchdowns.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

Stepfan Taylor ready for Rose Bowl

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Los Angeles --

Like Superman, Stanford's best player has an alter ego.

The quiet, courteous Stepfan Taylor is the Cardinal's relentless tailback. He is the school's all-time leading rusher, and if he scores a touchdown against Wisconsin in Tuesday's Rose Bowl, he'll take over the career leadership from Toby Gerhart in that department as well.

Then there's the other side of Taylor. He's called Kulabafi, a rapper and dancer who wears shades or heavy glasses like Spike Lee. The character grew out of a conversation Taylor had with backup running back Anthony Wilkerson and was launched in a series of YouTube videos. The name doesn't mean anything; he just liked the way it sounded.

Taylor's mother, Skyla Taylor, wasn't keen on the first Kulabafi video, which appeared in his sophomore year.

"I thought it was weird," she said. "There wasn't any music or anything. I thought, 'They need to give you more homework.' "

A single mom who dropped out of community college when she had kids, she drove Stepfan and his younger sister, Kayla, to get A's in school as they grew up in Mansfield, Texas.

"If they dropped to an A-minus, I told them we needed to get some help," said Skyla, a coordinator for an aerospace firm.

Kayla made the dean's list this year as a freshman at Southern Mississippi, where she competes in the discus and shot put on the track team.

Skyla's family has been beset by multiple tragedies. When she was 8, her mother was murdered in a case that still is unsolved. Two years later, her uncle was electrocuted in a workplace accident.

In 1996, when Stepfan was 5, Skyla's sister, Wendie Rochelle Prescott, was raped and murdered three months after another woman was murdered in the same apartment complex. The murders weren't solved until three years later, when a Louisiana man named Dale Devon Scheanette was arrested for a burglary near Dallas. His DNA was linked to the murders, and he was executed in 2009, Taylor's freshman year at Stanford.

Taylor said his aunt worked as a teacher's assistant at his school. "I saw her all the time," he said. "I was with her more than my mom sometimes. We were waiting for her on Christmas Eve, and she didn't pick up the phone, so we knew something was wrong."

The murder, on top of the earlier tragedies, "made our family so close," he said. "Things happen. We have to learn to forgive and learn from it."

His aunt's death "affected him a lot," his mother said. "He'd be real quiet. He was confused. We were always crying. He tried to cheer us up. He did little skits at home, and we'd record it, especially at Christmas time. We didn't want to celebrate Christmas every year because it was Christmas when we found her."

So the family would work at soup kitchens or find opportunities to help other families in need. "Stepfan loved doing that," she said. "He liked to hand things out, like cookies."

She thinks his interest in entertaining people grew out of that unhappy time in their lives.

Perhaps his drive to succeed on the football field did, too.

"It came from my family," he said. "They told me, don't let anything hold you back. Control what you can control, and be patient. That's one of the things they told me growing up."

In the Rose Bowl, he'll duel with Wisconsin's Montee Ball, who won the Doak Walker Award as the nation's best running back.

"If I was just a fan with nothing riding on this game," Stanford coach David Shaw said, "I'd get ready to watch one of the best running-back matchups in college football in a long time.

"You've got two guys who are complete running backs, not two guys that are gimmick guys, not two guys that are fly-sweep guys. These are two real running backs that believe in pass protection, that believe in blocking, running between the tackles, that have great balance and vision, all the things you're looking for. This is going to be fun to watch."

The first Stanford player to record three straight 1,000-yard rushing seasons, Taylor is the same size as Ball - 5-feet-11, 215 pounds. While he's not quite as fast, Taylor is just as strong and just as difficult to bring down.

"The NFL scouts say they can't find a flaw in his game," run-game coordinator Mike Bloomgren said. "You could see him on a team like the New England Patriots that likes guys who are well rounded football players."

Yes, it won't be long before Kulabafi performs on a bigger stage.

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